storyteller, broadcaster

Posts tagged ‘david manning’

The digital age we live in has produced some very strange research in the field of human behaviour, as well as just plain scams.

I was all set to declare Dr. Christopher Moeller as this year’s winner of the International Award For Terminal Dumbness. He is supposedly a psychologist who gathered a ton of coverage recently when he declared that anyone who is not on Facebook might not be normal. In fact, they could be a dangerous sociopath.

The reasoning behind this absurd pronouncement? Well it seems that the nutbars who were responsible for the mass killings in Norway last year, and the shooting spree last month at that movie theatre in Colorado, are NOT among the 900 million souls who exist in some form on the social networking site.

The story began on the pages and website of a German magazine called Der Taggespiegel, and it went viral when it was picked up by the Daily Mirror in England.

Dr. Moeller suggested that employers looking to hire young people, are now leery of folks who are NOT on Facebook, whereas until now, they were nervous about candidates who let it all hang out on that site.

The fact that no such employers were quoted or even named in the story made it smell a bit funny to me. With the help of Mr. And Mrs. Google, I went in search of Dr. Moeller. You know what ? I could not find him.

Personally, I don’t think he exists, except as a means of promoting Facebook, or possibly selling magazines.

Impossible you say? Remember David Manning? He was a movie critic who was always showing up in newspaper ads about a dozen years ago, praising films that no one else liked. Turned out old David never existed, but was created by one of the studios.

Stay tuned, and don’t believe everything you read or hear anywhere .. even from me.